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M INI-MOGUL alert! There’s nothing like a surprise hit to stir up a complacent $5 billion dollar industry. “Aliens vs. Predator,” a video game for the PC platform, has taken just two weeks to sell out its original 200,000 shipment as it took on heavily hyped competition such as the two “Star Wars” games.

So what’s a pair of young game designers from England to do when faced with massive popularity in the U.S.A. but cash in?

Seven years ago, brothers Jason and Chris Kingsley founded Rebellion, a small UK game studio that has also been signed to make the game of the Tom Clancy’s special forces novel “Rainbow Six.” But, for the future, they see a way through the corporate clutter by coming up with their own stories and producing their own games, doing everything but the distribution themselves.

For “Aliens,” Rebellion’s publisher was Fox Interactive, which is owned by News Corp., owner of The New York Post, and for Rainbow, due out later this year, they worked with “Red Storm. “

“The difference is making $12 instead of the $3 we get now on a $40 title,” said Jason in a Times Square diner this week. It was the 34-year-old’s first visit to New York, and while he was clearly in awe, he was ready to meet the moguls on both coasts. Microsoft is among those sniffing around.

“The games industry has been treated as a little brother by the movie industry for too long, like the T-shirts and the mugs,” he says. “But games can gross $40 million each, and only cost $3 million to make. Some of the big media companies, they have interactive divisions but don’t really know what they’re doing. Part of the problem is they’d say, ‘Let’s do a “RoboCop” game’ and expect it to sell. If it’s not a good game, it won’t. Unlike the movies, word of mouth counts for everything – not hype.”

Paul Provenzano who was VP of production and development at Fox Interactive for four years, sums up the industry: “The feeling is that licensed games are crap. We were successful because we looked at gaming as another form of entertainment rather than as merchandising. Warner Brothers aren’t really in the business. MGM has made a weak effort, Universal doesn’t really want to take advantage of their catalog …. It wasn’t till we made the ‘Die Hard’ game that people thought a film license could make a good game.”

There’s a bit of Hugh Grant about Jason, the polo playing, wind-surfing Oxford graduate who dropped out of his Ph.D. Zoology course to turn his and his brother’s gaming hobby into a business. When they were kids, Chris built PCs from kits and Jason would direct him in re-programming games.

Jason credits his interest in “Dungeons and Dragons” with giving him an insight into what makes a winner. As a former professional cameraman, he decided Rebellion needed a stake in a movie company, so he bought into Kickstart Films, a small UK production company. Some of the human figures in “Aliens vs. Predators” have the faces and screams of his office colleagues and their girlfriends.

In October 1998 $10 million in private funding came from two British venture capitalists, Peter and Michael Freeman, who made their money in real estate. Typically for the UK, the Freemans took a non-equity position. The boys have to make five games in three years.

Controlling the property from beginning to end is the Kingsleys’ goal. Rebellion and Kickstart’s next project, “Zed & The Unholy Warrior,” is a mummy movie being filmed this summer in Czechoslovakia for $13 million while simultaneously being made into a game.

“I’ve had film people come to me with a script and say, ‘This is my idea for a great game,’ but when I say, ‘What’s the game play?’ they don’t know what I’m talking about. You have to have the setting, the perspective, the ambience, whether it’s a strategy game all worked out beforehand.”